


Shades of Green

by el_gilliath



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes & Isobel Evans Friendship, M/M, Matchmaking Isobel, Mentions Isobel & Alex friendship, Post Season 1, good sibling relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22425208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/el_gilliath/pseuds/el_gilliath
Summary: It’s almost never easy, to see Alex. To see his shades of green. Shades of a man he broke, just a little, almost a lot. Shades of a relationship he let slip out of his fingers because he was too afraid to see. The olive of his skin, the green tint of his eyes in the correct light, the moss of his fatigues.It reminds him of times he would rather forget. It reminds him of times he will always want to remember.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 19
Kudos: 61
Collections: RNM Fanfic Remix 2020





	Shades of Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SuburbanSun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Shades of Blue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20016226) by [SuburbanSun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/pseuds/SuburbanSun). 



> Amy! This is for you, Shades of Blue is a stunner of a fic so it was my complete and utter pleasure to remix it. I really hope you like it as much as I love the original <3
> 
> Thanks to my beloved Marlo and Ariqa for looking this over.

It’s almost never easy, to see Alex. To see his shades of green. Shades of a man he broke, just a little, almost a lot. Shades of a relationship he let slip out of his fingers because he was too afraid to see. The olive of his skin, the green tint of his eyes in the correct light, the moss of his fatigues. 

It reminds him of times he would rather forget. It reminds him of times he will always want to remember. 

He thinks for a long time, after the shopping trip with Isobel. Just sits in the Airstream, or outside on a lawn chair, whenever he can and just thinks. Considers, really, considers how much it would hurt to return there. How much it would hurt not to. 

It’s not really a choice, in the end. 

———

He wakes up the day of the lunch, lurching out of bed in a panic, rooting around for his phone. His mind completely sure he’s missed it, missed his chance. It stops him dead in his tracks. 

He can’t help but laugh, a deep, guttural sound that’s more broken than he wants to admit. But it takes away all doubt in his mind, that and looking at the blue shirt lying on his couch area, innocently waiting for him to figure out if he wants to put it on. 

Maybe it wasn’t a choice the second he let Isobel buy it, maybe it wasn’t a choice when he placed it there last night _just in case_. Maybe it was never a choice, even when he ran away to get something easy. He feels like he was always destined to end up here, laughing at his own panic for thinking he missed out on a lunch that’s not even a date, not even a thing. It’s just Isobel sticking her nose into somewhere it doesn’t belong. 

The sheer _hope_ that Alex said something for her to suggest it, push for it, takes his breath away. Hope that he can fix it. 

Hope that he’ll be allowed to. 

A shade of green just like fresh grass just barely risen out of the ground, new, fresh. Hopeful for survival. Just like him. 

He does find his phone, telling him he still has a couple of hours until the lunch. Which means his worry was for nothing, his panic for naught. Though he can’t help but be grateful since it helped him decide. He has to go. 

He’s not losing Alex again. Not while he has an opportunity to try. 

———

He enters his truck, a mere 20 minutes before the lunch. Freshly showered, wearing the ridiculously comfortable blue shirt, but finds that he can’t turn the key. The guilt creeps up then, the doubt. After all, Alex wasn’t the one who told him to come. 

Will Alex want to see him, want him to be there, after everything he’s done? Or will him doing this just break them anew, splinter them further apart than they’ve ever been? It’s frustrating, defeating, torture. He doesn’t know what to do. 

The crippling doubt makes him tremble, slightly, in the front seat of his car. He should be used to it by now, doubting himself in anything and everything he does, should have a tactic to deal with it. But he doesn’t. 

Instead, he does what he always does nowadays; he calls Liz. 

“Michael? You okay?” Liz answers, as she always does. 

“Isobel invited me to lunch with her and Alex and now I don’t know what to do because what if he doesn’t want me there even if I really want to go?” He blurts out. His breath is heavy, his insecurity apparent. He feels green, the putrid shade of nausea. 

Liz is quiet for a long time, but Michael doesn’t mind. He’s come to appreciate Liz’s silence as her finding the right words, instead of becoming impatient. Even just a few weeks ago he wouldn’t have, but he’s trying to be better. Trying to rein in the canon that he’s become so he can actually be there for his friends, for his sister. Be there for the people he loves.

It’s not simple, it’ll never be simple, he’s so used to fighting for everything that he has that the fight or flight response is too deeply ingrained. But he’s trying. For Liz, for Isobel. For Max.

“Mikey,” Liz says. “You know as well as we do that Isobel isn’t one to do things out of the blue. If she told you to come, and you want to go, then you should go.”

“But what if she’s wrong? What if she only thinks Alex wants me there?”

“Would she do that?”

“But you don’t-“

“No,” Liz interrupts. “Alex loves you. You know that. Stop worrying and just. _Go_.”

He breathes for a minute, deep calming breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth. A calming technique Alex taught him in the few moments he was receptive to anything from Alex after Caulfield, after Max. It always works. 

“Okay,” he replies, his lips curling into a smile at her audible sighs of relief. “Okay, I’m gonna go.”

“Good. You deserve some happiness.”

He hears the sadness in her voice, the longing. They’ve been doing everything they can, working so hard on a way to figure things out. They’re just not there yet.

“You do too, Liz. We’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah,” she answers. “We’ll figure it out. But until then, go. See Alex. Take a chance.”

“Thanks, Liz.”

“Anytime.”

They say their goodbyes, and Michael hangs up, his breath a tiny bit easier, the beating of his heart a tiny bit slower. His nausea not so green. He wants to go. So he’s gonna go.

It’s easy to start the truck after that, easy to put it in drive. Easy to drive off towards the Crashdown.

———

He shouldn’t be surprised when the doubt sets in again as he parks. Shouldn’t be, but he is. He can’t be this much of a fuck up, doesn’t want to be, but every fiber of him screams that he’s doing the wrong thing. That he’s inflicting his emotions on Alex, that Alex doesn’t want that, that Isobel is lying. It terrifies him, it makes him mad, it makes him sad. It makes him want to cry and yell and tear things apart with his telekinesis all at once.

It’s exhausting, it’s painful, it’s… intolerable.

He looks down on the blue shirt. The shirt he let Isobel buy him. He admits to himself that it makes him feel like a charity case.

He also knows that Isobel isn’t doing it because she pities him, Isobel of all people knows how he feels about pity. He also knows that if he has any inclination of it being pity that made her buy him the shirts, the shirt, _everything_ , he wouldn’t accept it.

But even if she doesn’t pity him, she does feel sorry for him. Or maybe not sorry. Maybe she just _feels_ for him. In ways he doesn’t deserve.

He has a hard time accepting that he deserves someone like Alex, after everything he’s done. After Caulfield, after Deluca, after the way he screamed at him out of his drunken mind the last time he saw him. He loves Alex, he will always love him. Deserving him is something different all together.

His phone pings (another gift from Isobel), a message from Liz on the front of it.

_Liz  
Stop sitting in your car feeling sorry for yourself. Grab the bull by the horns, Mikey, while you have the chance_

He snorts, his mood lightening minutely. Especially when another message comes in a second later.

_Liz  
Dios mío, don’t tell Alex I compared him to a bull. I’ll never hear the end of it._

_Michael  
Relax, I won’t. How do you know I’m sitting in my car?_

_Liz  
Look up_

He does, and catches sight of her standing in the Crashdown window. She has her uniform on, the antennas bobbing lightly. She waves and he watches as she starts typing something on her phone.

_Liz  
Nice shirt. You know blue is Alex’s favorite color, right?_

_Michael  
Yeah, I know._

_Liz  
Good. Just so you know, he’s wearing green. That deep, bottle green you’re so fond of._

He looks back up at her and she smiles, winking at her before she pockets her phone and walks away from the window. He can’t see Isobel and Alex, but he knows Isobel prefers sitting by the opposite windows when she’s at the Crashdown.

“Right. Bull by the horn, Guerin,” he murmurs to himself. He takes a deep breath, two, three, before he opens the door and gets out of the car, closing the car door but not locking it behind him. No one would steal his piece of shit ~~beloved~~ Chevy anyway.

The distance to the door to the Crashdown are some of the hardest he has ever walked, his hand trembling slightly as he reaches for the door. It’s now or never.

———

The pride in Isobel’s face, the love, the _hope_ as he walks through the door is one of the best things he’s seen in years.

The surprise on Alex’s face, the cautious happiness, the slight smile as he notices the blue shirt wins, though.

———

It’s not until much later, that he reflects on what he almost missed out on that day if he had listened to his fears. If Isobel hadn’t goaded him into coming, if Liz hadn’t nagged him into not being stupid.

He knows now that Alex was happy to see him, happy to have him there. Cautiously optimistic, the way only Alex Manes can be. His eyes, still the gorgeous brown that fit so well against the green of his shirt that day, a color that Liz was right in Michael loving. It catches him off guard, when he thinks about it.

Because while Isobel might have bought him the blue shirt for Alex, he knows now she subtly persuaded Alex to wear green for Michael. Matchmaking in her own way, through gentle words and direct opinions, never too pushy or forceful, with just the right amount of _Isobel_. It’s because of her he gets to have this, lying on the couch of a newly decorated cabin, decorated in subtle details of blue, with small hints of green, fully accessible in every way for Alex and his amputated leg. 

She’s considerate, his sister, helpful in ways she doesn’t want to show, loving in way she hides from the public eye. She listened to everything Alex wanted for his home, and made it better. The crew she hired used to working with amputees and making their homes as good for them as they could possibly be. Only charging what she absolutely had to to pay the crew, only taking the smallest fee for herself. The only way she knew Alex would accept it.

Michael feels happy here, home in a way that he knows he wants the cabin to eventually be, in the future. When they’re both ready for it.

But for right now, Alex is in his arms and Buffy is snuggled at the end of their feet. They’re talking, their voices low murmurs that mingle together naturally. They can speak of fears now, they can speak of hurts. They’re learning to listen, learning to be patient.

Learning to be together as adults, who try and talk instead of shouting, screaming, hurting each other over and over just for the sake of getting a reaction. They’re learning to be pieces that fit, who want to be together.

Shades of blue and green.

It’s more ‘work’ than Michael expected. It’s also easier than he expected. 

“Hey.”

Michael looks down at the man in his arms. The olive of his skin, the green tint of his eyes in the correct light, the moss of the fatigues he hasn’t changed out of yet, since he came from the base. There’s no putrid green of nausea anymore. Just the green of fresh grass, like new hope.

“Let’s grab burgers at the Crashdown, with Isobel. Liz is working too.”

Michael smiles. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

His smile widens as Alex gets up, Buffy grumbling as he unintentionally jostles her. He watches after him as he makes his way to the bathroom, presumably to change his clothes.

He can’t wait for all of this to finally be home.


End file.
